Have you heard of SB 1383? If you haven't, you probably will soon because the regulations just took effect on January 1, 2022. I learned about this law through my involvement in community composting and collaboration with the City of Rancho Cucamonga Environmental Programs. Six months ago, I couldn't even have told you that SB stands for Senate Bill. The information I share here comes from CalRecycle website. It contains a wealth of resources on the regulations, waste collection and recycling, food recovery, education and outreach, and more.
What is SB 1383 all about? This groundbreaking legislation is a state-wide effort to reduce short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs). SLCPs such as methane, black carbon, tropospheric (ground level) ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons remain in the atmosphere for a shorter time than carbon dioxide but have a much stronger warming effect. Therefore, reducing SLCPs has the potential to significantly slow global climate change in the near term. For more details, see the California Air Resources Board website.
In addition to organic waste reduction, SB 1383 requires a 20 percent increase in edible food recovery to reduce food insecurity, a problem that has worsened during the pandemic. About one in five Californians are food insecure. In 2018, CalRecycle conducted a waste characterization study that showed more than six million tons of food end up in landfills every year. By diverting edible food from landfills, food recovery organizations such as food banks, food pantries, and soup kitchens can provide food to people in need.
One of the jurisdiction responsibilities specified by SB 1383 is to provide organics collection services to all residents and businesses. In this context, a jurisdiction may be a city, county, city and county, or special district that collects solid waste. Jurisdictions can choose a collection option that works best for their community; so you may see some changes to your current system.
Waste collection services may utilize one, two, three, or more color-coded containers. For example, a three-container, source-separated collection service uses a blue container for recyclables such as paper, plastic, and glass; a green container for compostables such as food and garden waste; and a black container for the remaining landfill waste. One and two-container services mix waste, which is later sorted by a facility that recovers at least 75 percent of the organics. Jurisdictions are also required to educate residents and businesses about collection requirements and how to sort materials into the correct container.
As a Master Gardener and environmental educator, I've been thinking about how SB 1383 will impact school and community gardens, and I believe most of the effects will be positive. The law presents a great opportunity to start composting organic waste in gardens and educating students and community members about the environmental benefits. Businesses such as grocery stores and restaurants may be more likely to donate organics for composting because they can no longer throw them in the dumpster. Free compost may be more readily available because each jurisdiction is required to procure a certain amount of compost for use in the community. The infrastructure developed for edible food recovery should make it easier for gardens to share excess produce. I look forward to seeing how school and community gardens contribute to future composting, recycling, and recovery efforts.
Do you want to learn more about SB 1383? The UCCE Master Gardeners of San Bernardino is offering two opportunities. The first is a brief overview presentation during the School and Community Gardening Collaborative Workshop on Saturday, January 29th, starting at 9 am. The workshop will be presented live on Zoom, and the presentation videos will be uploaded to the UCCE San Bernardino YouTube channel. The second opportunity is a longer Zoom class on February 11th at 3 pm. You can register for the workshop and the class on the UCCE Master Gardeners of San Bernardino website under Classes & Events.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
But climate change, aka global warming, may be an equal, if not more, of a factor.
So indicates a 10-member team of scientists, including UC Davis distinguished professor Art Shapiro, Department of Evolution and Ecology, in the March 4th Science journal.
The research article, "Fewer Butterflies Seen by Community Scientists Across the Warming and Drying Landscapes of the American West," sounds a crucial alarm, alerting us to try to find new ways of protecting our fluttering friends.
The abstract:
"Uncertainty remains regarding the role of anthropogenic climate change in declining insect populations, partly because our understanding of biotic response to climate is often complicated by habitat loss and degradation among other compounding stressors. We addressed this challenge by integrating expert and community scientist datasets that include decades of monitoring across more than 70 locations spanning the western United States. We found a 1.6% annual reduction in the number of individual butterflies observed over the past four decades, associated in particular with warming during fall months. The pervasive declines that we report advance our understanding of climate change impacts and suggest that a new approach is needed for butterfly conservation in the region, focused on suites of species with shared habitat or host associations."
Lead author is UC Davis alumnus Matthew "Matt" Forister, the Trevor J. McMinn Endowed Professor in Biology, and Foundation Professor, Department of Biology, University of Nevada. Forister received his doctorate in ecology from UC Davis in 2004.
As Pennisi points out, "butterflies are at risk in open spaces, too." She writes: "Art Shapiro, an insect ecologist at the University of California, Davis, and colleagues have shown that over the past 35 years, butterflies are disappearing even in pristine protected areas such as the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the western United States."
"To see whether that finding held up elsewhere, Shapiro and Matthew Forister, an insect ecologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, gathered data from the North American Butterfly Association, which has coordinated community scientist butterfly counts across the United States for more than 42 years. The duo also incorporated 15 years of data from iNaturalist, a web portal that collects sightings of plants and animals, including butterflies. In all, the researchers tracked the fates of 450 butterfly species from 70 locations in the western United States."
The research indicates that the butterfly population in the Western United States has decreased an average of 1.6% per year between 1977 and 2018. "Fifty species declined in at least two of the data sets used, including the Edith's checkerspot (Euphydryas editha), the rural skipper (Ochlodes agricola), and the great copper (Lycaena xanthoides)," Pennisi wrote.
The researchers warn that some species may completely disappear from parts of their ranges in the coming decades, as fall temperatures continue to align with or exceed summer temperatures, impacting breeding cycles and plant dependence.
Back in February, 2019, Shapiro told the Environmental Defense Fund's UC Davis meeting on "Recovering the Western Monarch Butterfly Population: Identifying Opportunities for Scaling Monarch Habitat in California's Central Valley," that it's not just monarchs in trouble.
"Monarchs are in trouble in California--but they're hardly alone," Shapiro told the attendees. "If we act as if this is a 'Monarch problem,' we're in danger of missing the real causes of Monarch decline--factors acting at a much broader scale. We've been monitoring entire butterfly faunas--over 150 species--along a transect across California since 1972. Our monitoring sites are matched with climatological data, allowing us to examine statistical relations between climate and butterfly trends. Based on this data set, our group was the first to document and publish evidence of monarch decline here. That's the only reason I'm here."
"At low elevations—below 1000'—entire butterfly faunas have been in long-term decline. We published several papers showing that these declines were about equally correlated with land-use changes and pesticide (especially neonicotinoid) use, with climate change a significant factor but much less important. Remember, these are correlations, not necessarily demonstrations of causation—but they are strongly suggestive. Monarchs were just one of many species going downhill; three once-common species (the Large Marble, Field Crescent and “Common” Sooty-wing) had already gone regionally extinct or nearly so, with others threatening to follow suit."
See more of Shapiro's comments on the March 4, 2019 Bug Squad blog. Read the Science article here.
- Author: Milton E McGiffen
From their website:
"The Global Earth Repair Conference will bring 500 or more people together to talk about earth repair (ecosystem restoration) at local, regional, state, national and international levels. The Global Earth Repair Conference facilitates the exchange of information between earth repair practitioners. The Global Earth Repair Conference will contribute to, and draw attention to, the worldwide, earth repair movement. Restoration efforts in the world are already substantial and there is a lot of experience and knowledge to draw on. The Global Earth Repair Conference is also about techniques for building broad-based, social movements. How can many more people become involved, including the youth? What are the mechanisms of local funding? The Global Earth Repair Conference aims to address both the technical and social aspects of planetary regeneration."
Website: https://earthrepair.friendsofthetrees.net/what-who-why/
- Author: Milton E McGiffen
For Immediate Release
July 7, 2014
BLUESKY BIOCHAR HELPS SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CITY COPE WITH DROUGHT
Contact:
Michael Wittman, BlueSky Biochar
818-599-9119
California's extreme drought conditions are forcing hard choices on managers of the urban landscape. Increasingly, homeowners and municipalities are forced to ask questions like: “should I try to save my flower beds or my trees?” These choices have a bigger impact than just aesthetics. Without trees to provide cooling shade, air conditioners work harder and use more energy. Trees and other ornamental plantings often represent a sizeable investment that property owners don't want to lose. Mature trees and beautiful landscaping can add thousands of dollars to the value of a property.
BlueSky Biochar provides a strategy for water conservation that really stands out as a long-lasting solution that has many additional benefits to plants and the overall environment. The city of Thousand Oaks, California is taking advantage of the superior qualities of BlueSky Biochar by using it soil media with new tree plantings. In the early Spring of 2014 the city of Thousand Oaks, California planted twenty new pine trees along roadways in the city using BlueSky Biochar in the soil planting media. The city is an enthusiastic early adopter of this “old-but-new” soil amendment.
Several years ago, while researching water conservation techniques and carbon sequestration, Thousand Oaks Public Works Superintendent John Smallish found some references to biochar and began to learn more about it.
Biochar is charcoal (like the highly absorbing charcoal used in water filters), and it has been used as a soil amendment in traditional agriculture around the world. But like many traditional practices, biochar was forgotten in the 20th century with the widespread use of cheap fertilizers and chemicals in agriculture. Scientists became aware of biochar only in the last decade when vast areas of dark, rich soil were discovered in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. More than 500 years ago, native people added charcoal to their poor, red tropical soils, transforming them into the rich black soil known today as Terra Preta (“black earth” in Portuguese). The biochar increased the soil's carbon content and, because it acts like a porous sponge, it kept nitrogen and other nutrients from leaching out of the soil in the heavy tropical rains. These human-created soils, more than 500 years old, are still highly fertile today.
Another example of traditional biochar use comes from Japan, where groundskeepers still use the technique of placing biochar in the root zone of valuable old trees to relieve soil compaction and revitalize the trees.
It is the porous quality of biochar that helps it retain water in soils, making it a great tool for water conservation, but water retention is not the whole story. Biochar is also a friendly home to soil microorganisms and fungi that work with a plant's root system to help it use water and nutrients more efficiently. Biochar in the soil can reduce water needs by up to 50 percent while also increasing the efficiency of fertilizers.
But biochar benefits don't stop there. Biochar is a byproduct of bioenergy. Getting renewable energy from wood involves heating it to release combustible gas. Often, a charcoal residue is left that makes perfect biochar. Charcoal can be burned for fuel, but if it is added to soil instead, it prevents carbon from going into the atmosphere. This makes it a “carbon-negative” process, meaning that carbon is subtracted from the atmosphere and added to the ground.
Kevin Wilson, landscaping manager for the city of Thousand Oaks, touts BlueSky Biochar's three key advantages: significant reduction of fertilizer runoff, impressive water conservation, and a carbon negative factor of three-to-one. For every pound of BlueSky Biochar that goes into the soil, three pounds of greenhouse gases are sequestered from the atmosphere. These advantages have motivated the city to become a real leader in the biochar field.
Kevin Wilson said, “The city of Thousand Oaks now uses biochar in the planting of all trees and shrubs as well as adding it to existing plants. We manage 27,000 trees which can make a big impact on climate change, natural resources, and carbon sequestration.”
Because biochar is still new to modern science, early adopters like the city of Thousand Oaks are still working out the best ways to use and apply it. Early tests of powdered biochar resulted in blackened work clothes and excessive dust. According to Wilson however, his staff has enthusiastically embraced BlueSky Biochar's unique pelletized form that allows a clean application and eliminates the need for dust masks. His staff is happy to leave behind the messy powdered material and now gladly employs BlueSky's pelletized Biochar, which is 95 percent dust free, permitting clean applications.
BlueSky supplies its pelletized biochar in bulk to large customers like the city of Thousand Oaks, and it also offers the same pelletized product in two bagged sizes for home gardeners and small farms.
Michael Wittman, CEO of BlueSky Biochar, has been a big promoter of the still small biochar industry. He helps community gardens make their own biochar from waste wood, and he travels around the region giving presentations to garden clubs and other interested groups, educating them about the use and potential of biochar. Recently, he and other volunteers formed the non-profit Southern California Biochar Initiative (www.SoCalBI.org). Education is crucial for creating awareness of the benefits of biochar and letting the public know that there are real, practical alternatives to agriculture that now depends on the unsustainable use of massive amounts of water and polluting chemicals.
Michael Wittman really believes in his BlueSky Biochar product. For him, it is about more than just business – it's about our future. Michael asks: “If one city can embrace the simple elegance of this sustainable soil supplement, how long before more follow in suit?”
For more information:
Video: City of Thousand Oaks – Golden Oak Tree Planting Ceremony (with biochar)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VkXf-UX5G0
What is Biochar?
http://www.biochar-international.org/biochar/faqs
Terra Preta
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/research/terra%20preta/terrapretamain.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081119-lost-cities-amazon.html
Japanese Biochar
http://www.geocities.jp/yasizato/JBA.htm
Biochar for Arborists
http://tcia.org/digital_magazine/tci-magazine/2012/09/index.htm#?page=22
- Author: Milton E McGiffen
The Climate Trust just released 2016 Carbon Market Forecast that covers a lot of important issues "which range from climate change playing a larger role in federal decision-making to increased carbon market linkage and momentum in conservation finance".
Key points are that carbon markets are going to expand now that interest in climate change seems to have momentum, and that California is going to lead the way in the short term. You can read the 10 Carbon Market Trends to Watch in 2016 here:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/01/prweb13149704.htm#.Vov_Q7bfZIw.email
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